LAS VEGAS – Ixia, a Calabasas, CA-based testing-equipment vendor, has added a P2P simulation feature to its IxLoad testing tool.

P2P traffic management has become a hot topic lately, as ISPs such as Comcast and AT&T have started experimenting with traffic management methods that slow Web traffic for individual users who consume a “disproportionate” amount of bandwidth by using P2P protocols such as BitTorrent and eDonkey.

Ixia says that its new P2P IxLoad feature will allow ISPs to accurately simulate the affects that P2P traffic will have on service quality for applications such as voice and video services. Typically, P2P technology distributes large data files by breaking them up into small pieces and sending them through multiple sources. While this method of file sharing is much faster and more efficient than relying upon one centralized server, it can also cause traffic management problems for ISPs because P2P protocols are mainly designed to download large chunks of data from sources wherever they can be found, and without particular regard to network efficiency.

“P2P is a key requirement for IxLoad, because P2P changes the game for ISPs,” says Ixia product manager Sashi Jeyaretnam. “If you think about all the assumptions that ISPs made when they built their networks, P2P defies them all. They didn’t expect P2P protocols to be on all time, and they didn’t expect P2P uploads to be so large.”

Essentially, IxLoad simulates P2P traffic by using P2P application replay capabilities and a library of various P2P traffic flow signatures. According to Ixia, this allows ISPs to accurately gage how well their networks will perform under various levels of P2P duress, and will let them design their traffic management policies based on more accurate measurements than P2P measurement tools that rely upon capture/replay technology alone.

“Once ISPs know the amount of P2P traffic that is traversing their network, they can simulate the amount of bandwidth they’ll need for applications like voice and video,” says Jeyaretnam. “Then they can measure the quality of experience users will have with that much P2P traffic on the network. That way, they can give their subscribers and business customers better guarantees for the quality of service they can expect.”